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Something to Watch: DVDs, 13May14

In movies we have I, Frankenstein topping the list with its near-Dean Koontz like premise, great cast, and excellent special effects. In a completely different style but still with excellent production values there is Her, a touching story about a man who enters into a relationship with his household operating system. This Spike Jonze movie won a ton of awards, and is more than worth your time to check out. Goodbye World is one I missed in the theaters about the world ending while some old friends hold a reunion, and while the premise sounds ordinary it has the potential to be interesting if they did it right. Special ID has Donnie Yen as an undercover cop with some serious Kung Fu fighting for his life against China’s most ruthless crime syndicate. This looks to be the best week in movies we have seen in a few months.

In TV… not so much. In Anime, the Armed Librarians are back, with the The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection. When you die, your soul becomes a book that anyone can read, and only the Armed Librarians can keep your secrets safe from the world. This series seems to have a lot in common with Black Lagoon (the anime, not the creature) in my mind. And then there is Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends NEXT, the 2nd season in the story of the school club that is supposed to be about making friends. They receive a warning that some of their activities (stalking, taking candid photos of their peers, playing adult video games, watching adult anime, and building time machines) are not approved club activities at their school. And finally, Deltora Quest is the complete series, 52 episodes of gem seeking adventure, striving to release everyone from tyranny once all the magical jewels are collected. And yes, this series is based on the Australian children’s book series written by Emily Rodda.

MC Frontalot yet again

I know I keep going back to this artist, but there is a reason. He has an amazing grip on Nerd sensibilities, and a control of word usage that is nothing short of amazing. This time we have only two tracks: Critical Hit and Pitch Dark, both Game-centric and at the core of how we evolved into our current reality.

Flying Robot Rockstars

KMel Robotics has an airborne video recording service as one of the uses for its quadrotor drones, and apparently to showcase that function they programed some of their drones to play the music being recorded. They also had to create some special instruments the drones could play, mostly by modifying existing devices. In this video they play three tunes, Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001 theme), Carroll of the Bells, and the national anthem. They have to have recorded the sound the drone motors and fans make and be electronically subtracting it from the audio track in order to make the music clear, which makes me wonder if they chose the instruments because they were not on the same frequencies as those noises. Thanks to I Programmer for the heads up on this one.

Evil Robot Rockstar Overlords

Robots haven’t been the stuff of science fiction as much as part of everyday life for years now, although Almost Human is a favorite show of mine, and still enough in the future to be sci-fi. How mainstream are robots getting? Recently President Obama exchanged bows with a Japanese Robot named ASIMO (just one letter short of Asimov, the sci-fi writer who invented the 3 Laws of Robotics), I think being acknowledged by a head of state counts as mainstream. Pretty much in that same number of days ago, sci-fi author John Scalzi tweeted about how he would like to see Babymetal, a three girl Idol group who sing sweet harmonies with a heavy metal band, tour with Compressorhead as their band. And yes, surprise, Compressorhead is a bunch of robots! I admit, I would pay money to see that show. Who is your favorite robot band?

Something to Do: Movies, 9May14

This week sees the animated Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return on the big screen, with quite an impressive collection of actors doing the voice work. The book it is based on was not written by L. Frank Baum, but rather his great-grandson, Roger S. Baum, who also writes books about Oz. Roger’s grandfather, Frank Joslyn Baum, didn’t write any books, but he did broker the deal with Samuel Goldwyn in 1934 that gave MGM the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Frank J. had the contacts to make that deal because he was in the business, having adopted two other Oz books into screenplays that became an animation in 1933 and a live action feature film in 1925.

Something to Watch: DVDs 6May14

There is not much in Movies this week, other than another slew of re-released Godzilla films packaged up two movies to a box to take advantage of the forthcoming new movie version. There is also the western animated Son of Batman, an adaptation of the 2006 Batman and Son storyline which looks pretty good. Western TV series seem to be notable for their absence this time around.

In Anime, Persona 4: Complete Collection is a surreal tale of murder, mystery, odd weather patterns, a self-willed TV show, and clues from an alternate reality. Fusé: Memoirs of a Huntress is a historical fantasy about the shogun’s vendetta against a group of human/dog hybrids known as the Fuse. The huntress who joins in the search ends up befriending one of them, and begins to question everything about the persecution of the group. Finally, Aria the Origination also includes an OVA, continuing the stories of gondoliers on Mars.